Which of the following 17th century travelers have left their accounts on India?
(A) Peter Mundy (England)
(B) Marco Polo (Italy)
(C) Mahmud Wali Balkhi (Balkh)
(D) Francois Bernier (France)
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → (A), (C) and (D) only
The seventeenth century is the period 1601–1700. Each traveller is placed by the years of his travels.
(A) Peter Mundy (England) Correct. An English trader (c. 1600–1667) who came to Mughal India in the 1630s and wrote of its towns, roads and famines in his travel diary.
(B) Marco Polo (Italy) Incorrect. The Venetian merchant (1254–1324) visited the coast of south India on his way home from China in the late thirteenth century, about three hundred years too early.
(C) Mahmud Wali Balkhi (Balkh) Correct. A traveller from Balkh in Central Asia who toured India in 1626–1631.
(D) Francois Bernier (France) Correct. A French physician who lived in Mughal India from 1656 to 1668, served at the court, and compared the Mughal empire with Europe in his Travels in the Mogul Empire.